Sharif/Manmohan Paradigm - In the regional perspective

Posted by Aneela Shahzad
on January 21, 2015

PM N.Sharif addressing the Dawn daily in his brief address to the budget session of the ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Council’ had said that ‘“Kashmir is a flashpoint and can trigger a fourth war between the two nuclear powers at any time,”

“I have a heartfelt attachment with Kashmir… It’s as much important for me as other parts of the country and that’s why I consider its development and prosperity my national duty.” He said.

Tribute and dua were offered to the martyrs of the Kashmir freedom movement and for the sacrifices and struggle of the Kashmiri people to achieve their right of self-determination. “Please convey my message to every Kashmiri that the government and people of Pakistan are with them in their just cause.”

Newsrooms even quoted him saying that he had a dream of seeing the held-Kashmir free from the Indian occupation and desired that this dream could turn into reality during his lifetime.

PM Manmohan Singh response on the very next day was, “there is no scope of Pakistan winning a war in my lifetime.”

Indian papers have henceforth reported: ‘Sharif’s office, however, called the report “baseless, incorrect and based on malafide intentions” and said the PM wanted any conflict between the two countries to be resolved through peaceful means.’

Apart from the childish nodding’s of love/hate extended towards India by the PM, also having shown extraordinary inclination towards India since even before his inception as the PM, vowing to knot friendly ties with India in spite of extreme rudeness and a threatening posture from the Indians, giving the notion that perhaps a weak disposition towards India is the policy of the PMLN, one should consider the graver aspects of international diplomacy too. Are the exchanges of fire on the LoC and on the diplomatic front just skirmishes between two naughty neighbors or is there more to it?

If one gazes over the international front, one finds a dynamic flow of events going towards unpredictable results. It is difficult to say which event led to which and which will lead to a following event; all that can be certainly done is to measure the present. Nevertheless speculation is a tool vital for any nation to assimilate its future in the very complex political framework of world affairs. The question is who can catch the butterfly-effect that could result in utter chaos for one’s nation and who can find the right way to re-direct it.

Contemplation tells us that the sudden change in the PM’s stance may not have been an unintended gesture of casual manner, but might have come under grave stress in the circumstances that surround the country. The very recent Geneva deal between Iran and the Sextet cannot be ignored in this regard. Although the deal still seems to be raw, but anyhow a deal has certainly been made and how this deal will impact the regional and global geopolitical scenario is yet to be analyzed by all the different possible angles. But one angle must be very clear on Pakistan, which is: its has severe implications on regional stability, especially when the Indian intelligentsia is cheering this deal so much.

The very next day, Indian official were announcing that India is sending a team to Iran to speed up work on (Chabahar) port that will provide (it) access to resource-rich Central Asia and Afghanistan. They want to take advantage of this dwindling opportunity created by these negotiations between two, decades’ old adversaries.

India’s fulfillment of its wish to have a road from Afghanistan to the Iranian port opening at the Persian Gulf may bring a possibility of prosperity to the three countries, but prosperity is a commodity that comes after peace; prosperity cannot be dreamt of over a soil forcefully occupied against the will of its people. In such diction, Iraq that has a daily average of dozens of killings via bomb blasts and terrorism, has been rated 7th in world’s fastest growing economies and Libya that is in constant political turmoil and instability since Feb. 2011 is the 2cd fastest by the World Bank, while the CIA World Factbook ranks Afghanistan as the world’s 8th fastest already.

Human populations are not trading grounds for profits, Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be measured in terms of their profitability alone; individuals that constituent a state need moral satisfaction in their freedom, their welfare and their respect in the community of nations, and to think that a people forcefully occupied still have their self-respect intact is a self-deception. Therefore if the road from Afghanistan to Chabahar, means an assurance of permanent presence and hegemonic control of India on Afghanistan, then such a proposition is unacceptable to the people of Afghanistan as well as those of Pakistan who are ever the much wary of the un-limitable imperialistic greed of India. Moreover to allow India to nest at Pakistan’s western borders when already towards the east it never fails to create threat, also when it is not compromising even an inch from its nuclear ambitions, as obvious from a recent report.

Therefore the policy for Pakistan cannot be of the ‘lame duck’ version, deterrence has to be shown from Pakistan, who has been defending the right to freedom of its two unfortunate neighbors, Kashmir and Afghanistan, in all democratic ways as possible, and has in fact set an example for the international community that it is a peace loving country with no imperialistic designs, and a friendly neighbor who can be relied upon when times are hard. Pakistan should use all the diplomatic tools it has to bar India’s evil plan that may result in total instability of the region. To loose Iran, a potential ally to an India, that has inflicted 3 major wars upon us already, and to give it a permanent station over our head is just like inviting our own doom.

So the PM’s assertion upon India has not come in a wrong time and nor should India consider it an empty one. India should not forget that the people of Afghanistan at geographically, culturally and religiously one with Pakistan, and Pakistan wants it’s equal brethren on its borders to live a free, prideful life, enjoying their democratic right to whatever way of life they choose for themselves. And will stand with its head held up high in the community of nations as a defender of peace, liberty and welfare of humanity, though its enemies would keep maligning it as a disrupter of progress; and will on maligning it as a terrorist, even when it is only a victim of terror and a victim of an alliance from hell.